VAT Theatre | Working with students

Isn´t it a bit scary – doesn´t matter what country it is, the “web people” look all the same?

Last tuesday I worked with high school students and together we generated some viral posts.

How did we do it – students (in groups of 6) posted a picture in our FB-work group and then started a wave of comments to simulate an evolution of a viral post. We talked about some crucial roles that a viral post needs (like “the Gullible, “the Troll”, the Smart Ass”) but the students were very open-minded and developed the roles further on their own. After 40 minutes there were about 800 comments and 6 different scenarios.

The next step is to use another group of students to analyse this social game and to find some important traits how to control the circulation of information on the web.

Why viral posts are good for research – they are extremely contagious and connect a lot of people very quickly. Also viral posts start to create new meanings and relationships and always grow much bigger than they were intenden at the first place.